


The Tenth Realm

by Margo_Kim



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Norse Religion & Lore, Canon-Typical Violence, Developing Friendships, Developing Relationship, Established Relationship, Exploration, F/M, Libraries, Library Sex, Marvel Norse Lore, Mouth Sewn Shut, Non-Graphic Smut, Non-Graphic Violence, Pre-Canon, Road Trips, The Nine Realms, Thor Is a Good Bro, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-23
Updated: 2014-01-01
Packaged: 2018-01-05 17:24:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 20,969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1096545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Margo_Kim/pseuds/Margo_Kim
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five hundred years before Thor's coronation, Sif's a lowly page who can't move up in the ranks and Loki's a Royal Academy student trying to survive his last examination. The solution to their problems may lie in the legends they heard as children of the lost Tenth Realm. Now all they have to do is actually find it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Asgard: The Realm of Aesir

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Keenir](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Keenir/gifts).



> I hope you like it, Keenir! I love your prompts and writing for them was a joy. 
> 
> Now with all the realms! (Being edited into multiple chapters because I am indecisive as hell about formatting.)

 

_“Behold, ye warriors brave,” the goblins cried_

_As brilliant shone, from within the cave,_

_The secret light. Here lay the realm forgotten_

_That Lady Ash, the woman-king of Asgard_

_Had fought so long to see. She fell and wept_

_At the beauty. “I claim my prize at last._

_I look upon my home—the Tenth Realm beckons_

_And here, forever, I rest my head and sword.”_

> —Excerpt from the final movement of Asgard’s epic, “The First Daughter of Yggdrasil,” Sif’s favorite poem as a child, as translated from the ancient tongue by Second Form graduate, Loki Odinsson.

 

The King’s Library was dead silent as Sif crept in through the skylight. It was always so hushed. She’d learned more of stealth skulking here after training than she’d ever learned actually _in_ training. The King’s Library forbade women from entering, just as the Queen’s Library forbade men, and most maesters who ran them had ears and eyes to rival Heimdall’s. Sif crept through the stacks like a hunter stalking particularly flighty prey. Her feet made no thump. Her sword never clinked. Even her breath was silent as an absence. Shadows boomed louder than her.

It was either this or set fire to every damn book around her and when the maesters came to put the flames out, she’d set fire to them as well and any other man who ever came up to her again and said, “Pardon, lady, but you belong elsewhere.” But that wasn’t really a viable option at the moment, not unless she felt like killing nearly every man in Asgard, and since she wasn’t quite there yet, creeping silently took enough skill to keep her distracted and sane.

And the look on Loki’s face when you surprised him was always worth it.

She saw him now, alone in the small study area tucked away at the end of the Vanaheimian theology stacks, sitting at a table sized for a banquet. Dozens of books, scrolls, and the occasional tablet covered the massive table, and when he had run out of room on its surface, he had spilled his texts over onto the chairs and the floor. Loki had his nose in one of the books now with another one open on his knees. He must have been translating again for his mouth moved as he read and periodically he’d scowl and glance down to the tome in his lap before jotting a note in the book he held and continuing. She kept her eyes on him as she doubled back and strafed until she stood at his back. He was stooped over, and as she stalked nearer, she saw that with his black hair pulled into a messy bun, the bare white skin of his neck was laid bare to her. She could count the vertebrae of the top of his spine. Truly, Sif thought as she pulled out the little pouch she’d tucked into her belt, what was going to happen next was his fault. A sight like that was too tempting to resist.

“Ymir’s beard!” Loki yelped as the mud hit the back of his neck. The book in his lap clattered to the floor as he jumped up, wiping at the mire as he glared daggers at her. Sif shook off her own mud-covered hand and laughed more merrily than she had felt all day.

“A gift, my prince,” she said, still grinning. “You have locked yourself in here so long, I feared you forgot the feel of the outdoors.”

He smacked her with the book he was still holding before he tossed it on the table with the rest and dug in the pocket of his coat. “Poets and romantics have overexaggerated the appeal of nature for far too long,” Loki said as he pulled out a handkerchief. “We speak too rarely on the glory of the walls that keep us from it. And from the wild savages who live too much in it.”

Sif wiped her hand on her already mudding training uniform and shrugged. “I’ll leave you to construct those poems. You could at least congratulate me on my prank. You of all people should appreciate it.”

Loki’s mouth quirked as he tossed the muddied handkerchief at her. “I appreciate them more when they’re not aimed at me. What do you want me to say? ‘Well done, it’s _very_ slimy’?”

“It is slimy, isn’t it?” Sif said proudly. She pulled out a chair, scooped up the books sitting upon it, and sat. “I had to look hard for mud that unpleasant.”

“I’m overwhelming honored. I’ll have to think of some way I can equally honor you soon.” Loki sat down too. He glanced at the book he’d tossed aside with the look of a man regarding a hot coal he needed to pick up. “I take it you’ve had a bad day,” he said instead. “You only think you’re good at pranks on bad days.”

Sif snorted.  “Bad day. Bad week. Bad year. Bad decade. Bad century. Bad five centuries. Five centuries of a bad life.”

“That sounds bad.”

“Good assessment.” She leaned forward in her seat and sighed. “Leonardsson announced the assignments for your brother’s diplomatic trip today.”

“Ah. I take it you are not one of the guards.”

“Another good assessment.” Sif’s hand curled into fists instinctually, the way they always did when she lingered too long in thought over Leonardsson and his training corps. But she couldn’t work up the rage. She’d been raging at the man, at his conservative ideas, at his refusal to treat her as a warrior rather than a novelty, for so long now that she may have raged herself out. Seven years she’d served under him as a page and watched her yearmates, younger and weaker than her, move up in the ranks as she stayed steadfastly behind. “Not good enough, sweet lady,” Leonardsson would sneer at every end of term, and every year she spent the warriors’ banquet serving him wine as he and his kind applauded her yearmates. But even in the face of this history, she’d held out hope that he would assign her to Prince Thor’s detail as he made Asgard’s publicity tour through the Nine Realms, stirring up support in face of the oncoming Partition.

Ah, the Partition. It was to be King Odin’s finest spell. Twelve years ago, Odin had announced that, in order to preserve the safety of each realm, the mages of Valhalla would seal off the permeable places, spots of travel where someone might walk on foot in Vanaheim and end up in Muspelheim. The other realms had protested of course, as had many of the commoners of Asgard. For generations, people, products, and ideas had streamed through these places of travel. When the Partition came down six months from now, the only interrealm travel possible would be through Odin’s Bifrost. Sif’s own father had come to court to protest the measures, calling it a blatant power grab on the part of the throne and a perversion of the natural order. Sif had been in her last days as a lady-in-waiting then, albeit one who was better with a sword than most of the warriors of the realm, and she’d stood proudly by her Lady Hedvig as he argued. The crown, however, was not swayed, not by Sif’s father and not by any of the other hundreds of petitioner. Asgard willed what the crown willed, and every realm would have to abide.

In six months, the Partition would fall, and Prince Thor was entrusted with winning the hearts and minds of the other reams before that happened. His tour through all the populated branches of Yggdrasil was supposed to be the grandest display of royal might since the victory parades following Jotunheim’s defeat five hundred years ago. And since it was a not so subtle reminder of the crown’s power, they would need warriors by the hundreds, maybe thousands to accompany him. Surely, Sif had thought, a female warrior might make a strange enough sight to join the tour. Perhaps her status as outsider would work in her favor for once.

And it had not.

“I am to stay here and defend the homerealm,” Sif said, “with the old men and baby boys with shining unused blades. All while my yearmates fight and drink with the royal prince.”

Loki scanned the table and snatched up a scroll. “One of the royal princes,” he said curtly. “You fight and drink with one of your own.”

“No, I _fought_ and _drank_ with one of my own. It’s been so long since I’ve done either with him that I wonder if he has forgotten how.” She teased, but she could tell that Loki’s pride was pricked. It often was. It was so inflated at times that it was hard to walk without getting it underfoot. “My prince is a worthy prince,” she said, and Loki glanced up from his scroll. “But he has little interest in matters of war. I need a prince who does.”

Loki’s face was cold as he went back to reading. “I asked him for you, Sif, after he told you no. He said me no as well.”

She winced at that, at the bitter memory of Loki recommending to his brother that he take the maiden page from the training grounds with him on his journey, that was as good with the blade as any man who fought alongside her. It was the only time Sif had heard Loki compliment her fighting skills or the fighting skills of any maiden, and Thor had laughed in his face when he was done. “If you wish to woo a maiden, brother,” Thor had said jovially, clapping his hand on Loki’s shoulder, “keep her near you. Don’t win her favor by sending her away.”

Sif had stood in the shadows of a nearby hallway and cried furious tears.

“I know,” Sif said. “I know, I know.” She leaned back on her seat and propped her feet up on the stack of books she’d moved to sit down. Leaning back, she studied the murals painted across the King’s Library Ceiling, great paintings of the greatest warriors of the realm and not one of them a woman. “They don't intend for me to succeed.”

"No, they do not,” Loki replied after a pause. “And they will make your life torment until you stop.”

"I will never."

"Tell them that. It has more value than telling me.  And get your feet off of those."

Sif glanced down at the pile of books she was currently resting her boots on. "You do know all the words are on the inside of the covers, correct? You can still read them fine."

"That gives you no right to get boot scuffs on the cover." Loki aimed a kick at her feet and Sif swung hers out of the way just in time for Loki to end up connecting with the top tome. It flew off the pile and skidded across the floor. Sif laughed as Loki scowled. "Come now, Loki. When are your exams over? You're no fun at all these days. I heard your brother spent his examination year cavorting through Vanaheim with a maiden in one hand and a flagon of mead in the other, and he still passed."

"That's because expectations for my dear brother's academic career had already been dramatically lowered by the time he reached his examinations which were, I should add, at a level far lower than the one I am currently attempting."

"I thought it was because he was a prince," Sif said. "I'm sure the same leniency applies to you."

"You've not met Maester Ellidottir," Loki said grimly. "And truly it was not the same case. Thor finished his schooling at the basic level of a noble's son, a First Form. I have passed that level years ago."

"So you're saying our destined king has but the standard education?"

"He's not the destined king. And yes, but no. Father spends more than enough time privately tutoring him to compensate. That's the official line, at any rate."

"And does the All-Father privately tutor you?"

Loki spread his arms wide, enveloping the library. "When would he have time when I learn so much on my own? Now get out of here. You're sitting on the Midgardian Socrates and I need him for a comparison quote."

Sif shifted and looked down at her seat at the book she’d mistaken as part of the seat. "This book is as thick as a stump."

"Yes, it's tremendously fun. Hand it over please."

Sif handed it over. "What do you intend to do with this multitude of words?"

"Sew something together," Loki said. "Preferably something that hasn't been sewn together before. In sixth months at end of term, to pass Fifth Form I have to turn in an epic work of previously unexplored research that no one in the thousands of years Asgard has been endured has ever thought of before.”

Sif whistled appreciative. “Elf’s blood, that sounds like a miserable task. What are you researching?”

Loki sighed. “That is the question. That pile by your elbow is the all the topics I’ve rejected thus far. Don’t touch it.” The towering pile of loose paper was the size of a small child and looked as if one sneeze would send it all flying.

“What an ugly mess,” Sif said. “Thank the norns you’ve another six months to finish.”

“Yes, well, I’ve supposed to been working on it for the past five years.” Sif stared at him. He shrugged. “Time passes so quickly,” he said.

“So that’s why you’re not going on the publicity tour,” she said jokingly. “And here I thought it was simply because you’re far too mean to be liked.”

And in the flash it took for Loki’s eyes to dart away and down, Sif could see that she’d touched the wrong nerve. That wasn’t the right kind of fighting. That wasn’t the kind of bruise she liked to give him. So Sif knocked over the pile of papers. Loki glared bloody murder while the sheets fluttered down around them like snow. “Oops,” Sif said and smiled the way a lady never would in public as she leaned back in her seat and spread her arms. “It looks like we’ve both had a bad day now. How could we go about cheering each other up?”

Yes, she thought as he lunged at her— _this_ was the right kind of fighting.

She liked him best like this, his mouth raw and angry on hers as his hands grabbed just a little too tightly—which is to say, she liked him honest and naked from it. She returned the favor, grabbing his hips and bucking up into him as he straddled her in the library. Their little grunts and groans, their hitched breath and the smack of their lips, echoed off the marble and bounced off that grand ceiling as all the heroes of old looked down in fascination. Perhaps there was some poor student a floor down wondering who was having much more fun than him while they studied. The thought made Sif grin as she bit the corner of Loki’s lips until he grunted. She pulled far enough away to whisper, “Shh,” her pursed lips ghosting over his. “We’re in a library.”

For that comment, he bit back.

It was so hard to get him out of his head these days. Loki tended towards brooding if you left him to his own devices. He thought too much and did too little. He pondered. Sif didn’t ponder. Or at least she didn’t make a habit of it. Perhaps she ought to do it a little more, but Loki should certainly do it a little less. He made her think. She made him stop. That was a good enough reason to sneak into the library.

Fifteen minutes later, Loki was back in his chair, looking for all the world like a perfectly respectable student hard at work, albeit one who looked like he might have been recently punched in the throat a few times. His hair was down now, though, and it framed his face as he read. She liked it. Her hair was down too, and she worked the ends of her strands through her fingers as she thought.

“Do you know what I need?” she asked.

“A penis and beard.”

“A _quest_ ,” she replied. “To prove beyond all doubt that I should be respected as a warrior of the realm.”

Loki didn’t glance up from his book. “Get on that,” he said. “You’ve six months before all travel must be approved by the All-Father, and I doubt he’ll grant permission to a woman page that his head warrior hates.”

“I could quest in Asgard.” 

“You’ve been a page for seven years,” Loki said. “I’ve seen the people who move past pagehood. If Leonardsson thinks you don’t meet their low, low standards, you will have to perform some feat greater than exists in our realm to prove him otherwise.”

“Then I’ll go abroad. I’ll slay a dragon. I’ll steal a boon from the dwarves. I’ll pluck a star from the sky.”

“I doubt you could get your hand around one,” Loki replied.

“You’ve no poetry in your heart at all.”

“Not a verse.”

Sif braided her hair and tossed it back over her shoulder. “It doesn’t matter,” she said, and the bitterness of her voice surprised even her. “I’d have to find the Tenth Realm to convince Leonardsson to let me move on.”

Loki hummed at that as he turned the page.

“What’s that?” Sif asked.

“What’s what?” he replied.

“You ‘hmmed’ strangely when I said that.”

“It’s nothing strange,” Loki said. “The Tenth Realm’s simply not a fairy tale that I hear very often, and you are the second person to mention it today.”

Sif sat up. “Oh?”

“A petitioner at court today, another one opposed to the Partition. He cited the Tenth Realm as a reason to hold fast.” Loki shook his head incredulously. “You should have seen my father’s face as one of his subjects attempted to argue that the realms should be kept open because in openness lies the only chance we have of finding the Tenth Realm.”

“How exactly is that?” Sif asked with the beginnings of a terrible plan forming in her head.

“Just the idea that if there somehow _was_ a secret realm lurking somewhere in the branches of Yggdrasil, we’d find it only as we found the other eight realms—by randomly stumbling into them. Surprisingly, it is an old argument.” Loki stood and reached his long body across the table, picking up a small black book with his fingertips. “Here,” he said, handing it over to Sif. “I found this in the stacks while I was searching for Tasharial’s _Magic of Fables._ I thought it would suit you.”

“‘The First Daughter of Yggdrasil’!” Sif exclaimed, running her hands over the well-worn cover. The book had to be three times as old as she. “Yes, I remember. Lady Ash found her way to the Tenth Realm through the secret goblin caves that once linked the Nine Realms together before she destroyed them to punish the creatures for their treason.”

“You’ve read it?” Loki asked, sounding genuinely surprised.

Sif rolled her eyes good naturedly at him as she opened the cover. “Every night when I was a child. You are not the only one familiar with great literature, and there’s not a fable about a woman with a sword I haven’t devoured.” Suddenly, she reached out and grabbed his arm, the terrible plan in her mind too large to be ignored. “Let’s do it, Loki. Let’s find the Tenth Realm.”

He looked at her as if she was mad. “Sif, it’s a myth.”

She waved that off. “We said the same of life outside Yggdrasil before we found it in the stars. Everything is myths and fables before you prove it true.”

“Or they are just myths and fables!”

“Perhaps,” Sif said. “But consider this—I’d wager my sword that no one’s written of the discovery of the Tenth Realm yet.”

Loki scoffed at that, but in the long second before he had, she could see how the idea had grabbed hold. “I have not the time to waste—”

“Think about it!” she implored. “A quest worthy to prove that I deserve to fight and die for this realm. A subject worthy of your intelligence and, and academic vigor unlike any other. Such a boon this discovery could be for both of us. No one could ever say that we were lesser after this.”

Loki looked at her, a curious want in his eyes. She recognized it. It was the same look she saw in her own. “The glory,” he said, almost to himself.

Sif held her breath and dared to hope.

“Who is this?” exclaimed a shocked, rather creaky voice behind them. Sif and Loki started and whipped around. An extremely old man with skin like the parchment he clutched to his chest stared at them before he raised one bony, accusatory finger and leveled it at Sif. “Maiden in the King’s Library!”

“Er—” Loki began.

Then the maester saw the sword. “Warrior in the King’s Library! A maiden warrior in the King’s Library!”

Sif couldn’t help brightening at that. “At least someone thinks I’m so,” she muttered to Loki.

“Do shut up,” he replied. “You’re shocking my maester to death. Maester Agnarsson. Maester Agnarsson!” Loki raised his voice until the maester finally heard. “Everything is alright,” Loki said just as loudly. “I know this is unorthodox, but this lady-in-waiting serves as my research assistant, and an authorized research assistant may go anywhere he or she likes within the sovereign libraries.”

Maester Agnarsson gaped at Loki and then at Sif and then at Loki again. “Research assistant?” He said it as if he’d never heard to the concept before, and though Sif had never if her life wanted to _be_ a research assistant, especially not to Loki, she was bristling at the implication that she wasn’t suited for it.

“Yes,” she said loudly enough for the maester to hear. “I assist Loki. With research.”

“Well done,” Loki said under his breath. She went to elbow him in the ribs and then remembered that she perhaps should refrain in front of the provost of the Royal Academy. “A Fifth Form student may have the assistant of their choice,” Loki said to Maester Agnarsson. “The lady is my choice.”

Maester Agnarsson studied them with an unnervingly shrewd eye. “Prince Loki, you told me that you would never again suffer to work with a partner in your studies.”

“Swore that I did. But I have met such a charming partner since that feckless promise,” Loki said brightly. “Beautiful. Docile. Obedient. Submissive.”

Sif smiled winsomely and hissed through her teeth, “I will stab you as you sleep.”  

“And as brilliant as any Second Form graduate,” Loki added. “Truly, an autodidact of rare talents. And as you can clearly see by her sword and shield, my lady is gifted in the arts of combat as well. Perfect to accompany me on my fieldwork.”

That got Maester Agnarsson’s attention. “Fieldwork? Then you’ve decided at long last, my lord.”

Sif snickered. “Yes,” Loki said loud enough to drown her out. “I seek—” he glanced sideways at Sif and sighed through his nose. “I seek the Tenth Realm, whatever that may be.”

There was a long pause as both Sif and the maester stared at him.

“Are you sure you don’t have a second project in mind?” Maester Agnarsson asked at last.

“So, so, so many others,” Loki said. “And here we are now.” He turned to Sif who straightened up and tried her best to look docile, obedient, and submissive. “My lady—”

“Yes, my gracious, wonderful lord,” she simpered.

Loki scowled at her. Sif quirked her mouth as innocently as she could. “If you could be so kind as to prepare for our journey. We set out presently.”

She sunk into her deepest curtsy with more relish than she’d mustered in all her long years of finishing school. “ _Certainly_ , my lord. Whatever my lord wishes. If there’s anything this humble servant can do to ease the troubles of my weary, brilliant, beautiful, sensual—”

“Yes, thank you, my lady, that will do,” Loki said pointedly. “We depart in two hours so make haste.”

Sif popped out of her curtsy. “Two hours?” she said in a voice that was not quite docile, obedient, or submissive.

“Three if you must,” he said. He gave a curt smile to Maester Agnarsson who was still standing there gaping at them. “That is how long I estimate I have before I realize what a terrible idea this quest is, and if you plan to carry through with this, you want me in another realm by the time that happens.”

“Two hours time to pack for a six month journey,” Sif said. “I can handle that.”

“That positive spirit has kept my research going when I most wanted to give up,” Loki told the maester.

“My prince,” the maester protested, “this is ill-advised to say the least.”

“So are the majority of the decisions I’ve made in pursuit of my higher education, including deciding to pursue it at all,” Loki said as he swept his scrolls and books into a bag that held far more than it should. “Why should I alter my course so close to the end?”

 With that closing argument, and with the assurance that only a crown prince can muster, Loki flipped his bag over his shoulder, offered a curt smile to the maester, and grabbed Sif by the elbow as he swept out of the King’s Library, leaving most of the debris of his research in his wake. “This is the worst plan you have ever had,” he told Sif as they ran.

“And you’re going along with it,” she said happily, more happily than she could remember feeling in a long time. At last, at long last, a _quest_. Perhaps the last one that Asgard would ever see of its kind. “In two hours time, I shall meet you at the stables supplies in hand.”

“Oh no,” Loki said as they narrowly avoided flattening a student in their haste. “I refuse to ride across the universe on a horse. Meet me by the ash at the river’s bank, and we will travel in the manner which befits us. Or rather, befits me.”

“You tremendous prig,” she said affectionately and kissed him hard. He blinked at her when it was done, and it occurred to Sif that they had never done that in something that resembled public before. Oh well, she thought. They were about to run away with each other. There was no use denying the rumor mill wheat.

“Go,” he said, and Sif turned and went.  

 

 


	2. Jotunheim: The Realm of Giants

 

_Laufey-king had nine by nine sons and nine by nine they fell to Aesir blades. The swords froze in their chests and the Aesir could not get their weapons out. This is where the icicles of the battlefield come from. Nine by nine sons had Laufey-king when the battle began and the grief of it poisoned The High Queen’s womb. Her unborn son came out a shadow and neither Laufey-king nor the High Queen could bear the sight of him. –He is a curse, spoke the priestesses when they beheld him. –Half-melted, half-thawed, he will bring eternal summer upon us. Laufey-king could not look upon him without shame and so hid him in the moonbeams of the temple of the fallen for the gods to do with what they would…_

_Some whispers say the Aesir stole him. Some whispers say the true gods took them back. Some whispers say the cursed child stood and walked away into the hidden realm between all worlds where the unwanted love and the wicked wash clean and none ever return…_

>  —from  _Bitter Fell the Burning Blades_ , Jotunheim’s greatest account of the Winter Wars written by the warrior poet Jallar. 

 

Skidbladnir was a gorgeous ship, perhaps the most gorgeous that she had ever seen, and Sif’s family hailed from Asgard’s largest sea port. This was dwarf handiwork, no question of it, and though Sif lived close enough to Valhalla to see such work before, she’d never marveled at it on such a scale before. This ship was the thing of legends, large enough to hold all the warriors of the realm, small enough that it could be folded to fit inside a pocket. It sailed over water and air faster than any other craft. When Sif stroked the brow, she swore she could hear it purring. It was, without a doubt, the most beautiful vessel she’d ever laid her eyes on.

It was also, equally without any doubts, not Loki’s.

“Did you steal this ship?” she asked as they flew up the River Irving. She was not sure if they were in Asgard or Jotunheim at the moment. The river flowed through both realms, and Sif was not sure how the sights would differ. It was only now, as she stood on the bow of the greatest ship in creation, that it occurred to her that she’d never been outside her own realm before. And perhaps she still hadn’t. The air was so thick with snow and mist that even if she knew what Jotunheim looked like, she wouldn’t know if she was there yet. Sif wrapped her furs tighter around her around her either way. Whether this was Asgard or Jotunheim, the winter was still bitterly cold.

Loki, damn him, didn’t look cold in the slightest. “Stealing is a strong word. Is it mine in the strictest definition of ownership?” Loki asked. “No. But in a far more fluid definition that takes dire need into account? No again. But I promise you, if Skidbladnir has not been missed from the treasury yet, it will not be missed now. Thor and I have been trading it back and forth for trips since we were just a century old.”

She opened his mouth to inquiry further about that, somehow doubting that these were the types of trips that two young princes should go on, when Loki laid one hand on her elbow and pointed ahead with the other. The mists were rolling back now, as thick as the silver water Skidbladnir sailed through, and in their absence, Jotunheim rose. She couldn’t stop herself from gasping at the sight. The sky was a deeper indigo than she’d ever seen hanging above Asgard, but the light from the famous three moons was more than enough to illuminate the white landscape of ice and snow. It didn’t look like a real land. More like a dessert to cap the end of a very good feast, one of Odin’s spectacles where the finest bakers of Valhalla spun out little sculptures in sugar and frosting that were so sturdy they could climb a dozen feet tall and so delicate they’d melt on your tongue.

And before her, the crown of all the intricate gems strung through this world, was a glittering ice palace that looked like it had been carved out of the mountain it jutted from. It was a silver sibling to Asgard’s golden palace, a strange and alien beauty that held its own in majesty.

“Angrboda, the queen’s palace of Jotunheim,” Loki said. “When the Jotuns had a queen lineage of the same name. She used to be the more powerful of the two monarchs, but her jurisdiction was the domestic realm. As Jotunheim marched out into other realms, her powers waned. The princesses were something of our valkyries in the war. They died in battle, everyone. Then their queen died of grief, or so the legends go.”

“And became of this palace?” Sif asked for it may be a Jotun stronghold, and it may have deserved the misery that befell it, but it was such a beautiful creation of spun sugar and light that the thought of death flooding jabbed at her heart.

“It serves now as it did when Angrboda sat upon the throne—as the Great Library of Jotunheim. Great being a relative term, of course. It never rivaled any of the libraries of Asgard, and we gutted what useful books it had after the war and periodically since then as tribute. The maester honored my father heavily for that.” Loki raised his hand just a fraction and Skidbladnir slowed. “But the local folklore remains, and the Jotuns have always had a strong belief in the Tenth Realm. At the turn of the millennium, there was even a sizable cult centered on it.”

“You think the Jotuns have gotten closer to the true nature of the World Tree than Asgard?” Sif asked.

Loki shrugged as the palace loomed closer and closer. It was right on the water, Sif realized, with a canal running underneath it. They would sail right in. “Asgard’s priorities have shifted their attentions elsewhere. If anyone knows anything about the Tenth Realm, it would be Jotunheim.”

A blast of ice wind blew across the bow, and Sif shivered again. She was suddenly conscious of their soft pink skin in this winter wasteland. “Are we following in your father’s footsteps and raiding them for the information? I don’t imagine they’ll hand it over to two Aesir.”

“It’s a library, Sif. Anyone may read at a library. Quick question, though,” Loki asked as his skin began to turn blue. “How good are you at lying?”

By the time Skidbladnir pulled into the harbor underneath Angrboda, Loki’s spell made the two of them look every bit as Jotun as the guard who called for them to identify themselves. “Don’t gawp,” Loki said under his breath as they walked down to the dock. “You’ve seen Jotun every day, remember?”

“Who are you and what business have you in Angrboda?” the guard growled. He was about nine feet tall and thick as an oak tree. Of course, so was Sif right now. Her fingers twitched for her blade, strapped to her back and invisible as her Aesir skin. She’d seen Jotun before, but only in captivity, their spirits and bodies already broken. This one was whole and ready to fight.  _Surely the heart of a Jotun guard might be quest enough…_

“My name is Jarndyce, trader from Sladrorir country, and I seek access to the lore books,” Loki replied, though his voice was not his own but a rough low grumble that sounded like rocks scraping together.

The guard shifted his spear, and Sif tensed, ready to take him down before he got to them, but the guard just held out his empty hand and Loki placed some white papers upon it. They looked blank to her, but the guard nodded and handed them back. “Out the hallway, up the staircase, third floor, fifth room on the left. That’s lore. After four hours, you and your wife must pay to dock this ship.”

“I’ll pay now,” Loki said, handing over a fistful of air that that guard also accepted gratefully.

“Wife, eh?” Sif said teasingly as they hurried past the guard and out of the harbor, into a long hallway ten men wide, lit by the moonlight filtered through the ice.

“Jotun wives must defeat their husbands to be in combat before the marriage is sealed,” Loki said. “Considering how you’ve thoroughly misused me in sword practice, it seemed fitting enough. Be careful!” he said suddenly as Sif reached out to touch the pure ice walls. “We only look Jotun. The ice will still do some nasty damage.”

Sif drew her fingers back. “A backwards spell,” she said, “though it serves our purpose tonight. What a shame to look this hideous and not get anything for it.”

The fifth room on the left of the third floor was just as icy as the rest of the palace. The shelves were blue ice with corners sharp as daggers, and upon them were books almost like what they had in Asgard. “Leather pages from the hide of some dumb beast,” Loki said as he flipped through one. “They turn better in the cold. Look, they’re written in the old tongue of Jotunheim. It predates the All-Speak by at least a few thousand years if not further back.” Sif looked. She couldn’t read a word.

Now that Loki had a book in hand, Sif felt particularly useless. “How can I help?” she asked. Loki didn’t look up as he read where he stood while his free hand pulled more books on the shelf.

“Need to find a map,” he mumbled absent-mindedly. “Or a prophecy or…” He was gone. You could pull him out of a book once he’d crawled all the way in, but it had better be worth the pain. Sif threw her hands up.

“I’ll walk around then,” she said, stepping away from him. “See what I can learn on my own.”

“No, this is older,” Loki muttered. “Far, far older. Ten thousand?”

Loki was settled in fine. She took one last look around the small room and stepped back out into the dark hallway. She walked carefully on the ice floors, but her feet never seemed less that sure underneath her. There must be something about the ice. Even barbarians couldn’t spend their time slipping and sliding from one end of the castle to the next. Although it was hard to think of the Jotuns as barbarians, Sif thought, in the face of such beauty. There had to be something about the race worth saving if they could make a castle like this.

Of course, Sif and Loki appeared to be the only people in the library at all. No. No, the generation of Jotuns who built this library were long, long dead, and thinking that settled Sif’s heart some.

The entire floor was empty of life. So was the next one up. On the next, she heard rustling movements in the distance, but they never got closer to her nor did they get father away. Sif remembered the death that haunted this palace’s recent history and pursued the sounds no further. Let the spirits lie.

Another five stories up, Sif had been walking for hours and had found no one and nothing of use. Just room after room of books she could not read or no books at all and just empty shelves where they had once been. The entire eighth floor was empty of reading materials—unsurprising, considering that the rooms were labeled such things as “Tactics” and “Knifework”. These would be the first subjects the Aesir would take. But as she ghosted her hand over the empty shelves, she couldn’t help but feel a little sad. She’d been banned from such books herself as a child, and she’d felt the want as keenly as a knife to her chest.

“You won’t find anything here,” came a small voice behind her. Sif whirled around, her hand going for the blade on her back, but no one was there.  _Spirits_ , she thought.  _Time to go._  And then she glanced down. If Sif had been Aesir right now, the child would have come up to her upper thighs. As she stood now, the child’s head was around her knees, but they stared up at her with a brightness in their eyes that made them seem older than their height would suggest. “The Asgardians took everything here,” the child said, with only a little bit of gravel in their voice. “Some say the Queen hid the books before she died, but that’s just something the old warriors tell themselves to make them feel better. It’s not true. The Asgardians burned them in the courtyard while the writers wept. They say the palace smelled like burnt flesh for decades afterwards.”

“And who is they?” Sif asked despite her better judgment.

The child shrugged. “Just ‘they.’ Are you from the country?”

 _Be careful_ , said a little voice in Sif’s head.  _This child is smart._ “Why do you ask?”  

“You gawp like you’ve come from the country. Is it true you all live in snow huts?”

“Who are you?” Sif asked. Asking questions was a good way to avoid answering. Sif’d learned that from her own short time wrangling Valhalla’s children.

The child clicked their heels together. “Drottninga Laufeydottir. Fifty-second in line to the Silver Throne if you feel like bowing.”

Laufey’s daughter. The thought of throwing her head at Odin’s feet flashed through Sif’s mind. This child was the enemy of Asgard. Sif bowed, her head churning. “It’s an honor, your highness.”

Drottninga stared at Sif before she laughed. “Then you  _are_  from the country,” she said. “Where do you come from that treats bastard runts as treasures?”

For a second, Sif’s mind went into wild panic. But only for a second. Loki wanted to know how well Sif could lie? She would show him. “Far, far south,” Sif said, “but it has been a long time since I was there. I’m returning home from travel before the Partition falls.”

The child’s face darkened immediately and she spat on the ground. “May Odin choke on his blood for it. I know plenty of Jotun who’d be willing to help.”

Sif’s ears pricked. “Do they plan to?”

Drottninga narrowed her eyes at Sif. “Do they plan to what?”

“Make Odin choke.” Sif’s heart pounded with excitement in her chest. Foiling an assassination plot—Odin would make her his personal shieldmaiden for that. “I could help. I would love to help. Death to Asgard.”

“Don’t be stupid,” Drottninga said. “We’re not going to bring Asgard’s might down on us. Not while they’re flexing their muscles for all the realms to see. The worst thing that could happen right now would be an attack on the royal family. No matter who does it, the lords of Valhalla will blame it on us.”

“Understandably,” Sif said before she could stop herself.

“Understandably?” Drottninga repeated, her voice as cold as the winter air. Sif said nothing. “What is your name?” the princess asked.

“My name?”

“Speak.”

The name  _Sif_  existed nowhere outside Asgard. “I am—Sigyn.”

“That’s not a Jotun name.” Apparently  _Sigyn_ didn’t either.

“It is in the south.”

“Name your country.”

Sif said nothing.

Slit her throat. It was the easiest option here. Run the Jotunling through with her blade and run to Loki before the body was found. Sif could even take the body with her, no fear of running into any witnesses in this mausoleum of a palace, and she could show the All-Father the body of the daughter of his greatest foe. The tiny body. So young and so small. It would be an easy thing to kill her.  It would be so easy.

“The blood of your king flows in my veins,” Drottninga hissed, her red eyes like flames. “You will answer when I ask.”

 “Not my king,” Sif replied, and as Drottninga reared back in shock and rage, Sif turned on her heels and ran. She vaulted down the grand staircase, flying down floor after floor as the ground grew slipperier underneath her. By the time she made it back to Loki, she could hardly stand.

“What is happening? Why is the defense magic activated?” Loki said as the room began to melt around him. “You should have killed her,” he will tell her later when they’ve made it past the guards, back onto Skidbladnir, and into the open sky with Jotunheim laid out like a map underneath them as the great spires of Angrboda melted behind them.

“She was a child,” Sif will protest.

“Then you should have lied better or, best of all, said nothing at all,” he’ll snap because he’d learned nothing in the hours that she’d been exploring and now they could not go back. And she will hate him, just for an evening, for making her feel useless, for making her feel stupid, to make her feel ashamed of letting a child live.

But that was later.

“Run,” she ordered now, grabbing him by the arm, and without a moment’s hesitation Loki ran, the book he’d been reading still clutched in his hand.  

 

 


	3. Vanaheim: The Realm of Vanir

 

_2._

_Here you find the center_

_Of the center of the breathing, growing_

_You—the last unknown realm._

_31._

_Inside you, more wonders,_

_The Tenth Realm growing inside your young womb._

_You give birth to the stars._

_87._

_Your body is a map_

_And I become cartographer—searching_

_For the center of all._

_105._

_Ash tree, sink your grey roots_

_In my wells and drink knowledge of the ten:_

_All shattered, each barren._

> —Selections from “Love Poems to the Empty Sky,” written by Tyrald the Skald on the life and death of his wife.

 

“Books on the Tenth Realm, Maester Yorenson?” Oza shook her head as the three of them walked through the great Cathedral of the Gods. “That is hardly a subject befitting the study of a maester of Valhalla.”

“It’s captured my interests,” Loki said loftily, wearing the skin of an ancient man with a white beard that nearly tickled his toes.

“You do know Vanaheim is our ally?” Sif had pointed out when Loki had adopted the disguise. “I realize that we’ve spent three weeks on the lamb in Jotunheim, but we are safe here.”

“On the lamb because of you. Now we’ll be on the lamb because of me. Vanaheim is our ally, true,” Loki had replied. “But I’ve been to the Cathedral before and we did not part on the best of terms.”

“What?” she’d teased. “You forgot to return a book?”

“I accidentally loosed a hydra in their foyer.”

“Oh.”

She’d gone along with the disguise after that.

“But fairy tales and children’s stories,” Oza continued as she swept across the great marble floors. “You cannot have brought yourself and your daughter all the way to Vanaheim, to the greatest temple of academia in the Nine Realms, merely to read myth.”

“Papa is  _very_  particular about what he studies,” Sif said cheerfully. “I promise you, he would not ask if it was not essential to his research.”

Oza gave them one last confused look before she shook her head again and opened the great mahogany door they had found themselves in front of. “Follow me,” she said.

Loki let her get a few feet ahead before he glared at Sif. “Stop calling me ‘Papa,’” he said under his breath.

“What?” Sif said. “Can you not handle maintaining a cover?”

“Right before we entered this library, your tongue was in my mouth,” Loki replied. “The proximity of these events is far too uncomfortable. And lying is not your job anymore. Leave that to me and try to say as little as possible.”

“Here we are,” Oza said before Sif could respond to that, gesturing her long, graceful arms at the selected stacks. “Apologies for the mess, Maester. We haven’t had time to clean since the Asgardian progression.”  

Sif didn’t need to be touching Loki to know how straight he stiffened. “The progression?” he asked.

Oza smiled with the first book of enthusiasm since they’d arrived at her desk asking for directions. “The prince’s tour! It was magnificent, I must say. Banquets every night with dancing afterwards, the finest entertainment, the greatest food. And Prince  _Thor_!” Oza pressed a hand to her heart, which Sif thought might have been a bit much. “Every bit the golden figure they said he would be. He was everything a prince ought to be. Especially compared to his brother.” Oza’s face darkened and she muttered something that sounded like, “Hydra droppings everywhere.”

“It’s a shame we missed it,” Sif said with a sideways glance at Loki.

“Oh, but it is!” the research librarian exclaimed, brightening again. “Especially since you two are academics. I mean,” she like something obvious was happening, “ _Thor._ ” She leaned towards them conspiratorially. “He signed his book for me.”

Sif’s brain froze for a moment. “Thank you,” Loki was saying stiffly. “We’ll just—”

“I’m sorry,” Sif interrupted. “He signed his what?”

Oza waved her arms excitedly. “I know! Imagine! Me, a junior military historian, meeting  _Thor._ ”

“I’m trying very hard to imagine it,” Sif said while Loki’s stare promised murder, “but I’m having some difficulty. Perhaps you could elaborate a bit more.”

“I didn’t think I’d get the chance to ask him,” Oza effused. “I mean— _Thor._ ”

“Stop saying his name like that,” Loki said.

“You know, wait here,” Oza said. “I’ll show it to you. I’ve been showing it to everyone, just everyone. I mean, you know—”

“ _Thor_ ,” Sif supplied.

Oza nodded passionately, black curls bouncing about her head like springs. “Exactly, exactly. I’ll be back in one second.” And in a flurry of robes and motion, she was gone.

“So let’s begin on these lower shelves,” Loki said immediately. “I’ll start at the far, far end.”

She grabbed him by the arm before he could get away. “Thor wrote a book?” she said incredulously. “When you speak of him, you make him sound barely literate.”

Loki closed his eyes and leaned his head back like he was praying for strength. “Yes. Thor wrote a book. Every First Form student in order to graduate must write a book. Thor is a First Form graduate. Ergo, Thor wrote a book. Can we please move on?”

Sif pointed in the direction that Oza had disappeared in. “Why was she so excited about it?”

“I don’t know.”

“I think you do know.”

“Well, you’re wrong. I know nothing.”

He started to walk away again and Sif leaned against the bookshelf in front of him with her arms crossed. “Drop your disguise,” she said.

Loki started. “Why?”

“Because I wish to have a conversation with you, and I cannot do so if you look like the All-Father’s father.”

“I’m in disguise for a reason, Sif. She’ll be back any minute”

“Drop it. Or my simple little brain which cannot possible handle maintaining a cover might get too confused and will just have to remember to call you Papa everywhere. Always. Papa.”

 And then there was Loki, scowling at her with his own youthful mouth. “I’ve given you too much power by telling you my weaknesses.”

“Yes, that was a mistake. Please explain what is happening.”

Loki sighed and rubbed his face with his hands. He muttered a series of things so lowly that Sif couldn’t hear (and she suspected that she shouldn’t try) before he said, “Fine, fine. Thor chose to write a military history of the War of the Bronze Crowns, and it became very popular in certain academic circles. That’s all.”

“How popular is very popular?” Sif asked.

Loki groaned like someone had just stabbed him. “When you write a history for the masses, it’s very easy to dominate the field. People want narrative over facts, they always do. You should see his original citations before I cleaned them up for him. Not one footnote was correct. He was far too generous with speculation. We cannot know half the things he presumed to put as true were anything more than the product of an over imagination. Unfortunately there will always be those who go for that sort of thing.”

Sif whistled. “So that popular.”

Loki slumped against the book ladder and rested his head against the steps. “Yes. That popular.” He looked forward at the highest shelf, his mouth twisted in a rueful smile. “I only helped him because he thought he was so afraid he was going to embarrass himself. He need not have worried. My brother is incapable of failing.”

“Once in the Great Hall, I saw him drop a cut of pork on the floor while he was walking, accidentally step on it, and then pick it up and eat it anyway,” Sif said. “If that helps.”

He was silent for a long moment. “It doesn’t hurt,” he said eventually.

Sif pushed herself off the bookshelf and sauntered over to him. She grabbed the railings on either side of his head and pressed herself against flush against him. “I bet it’s not even that good of a book,” she said, her knee sliding between his legs.

“Oh, it’s a very enjoyable read. I’d hate it less if it was worse,” Loki said as his arms snaked around her waist and pulled her tighter still. He smiled down at her and even though she was still warm with annoyance at him, she couldn’t resist smiling back. “You’ve a strange way of commiserating.”  

She kissed him on the underside of his chin. “Many would call this a standard method. Besides,” she said with a mischievous little grin, “I like you best when you’re a little sad.”

She gasped as his arms tightened suddenly around her, but there was a strange look in his eye that she didn’t quite know how to place.

“So his handwriting’s a little messy because he was signing so many,” Oza said cheerfully as she popped into the aisle, “but you can really—” She froze. She stared.

Sif and Loki made horrified eye contact. “Oh, Papa,” she said. “You look so young.”

“Really?” Loki asked her.

“ _Loki_ ,” Oza hissed.

“Run?” Sif asked.

“I have a picture of Thor shirtless,” Loki announced quickly. The two women stared at him. “And I am willing to trade it for five hours with these books.”

There was a long silence that followed as Oza glared at them, her eyes narrowed almost to a slit. “One hour,” she replied, which was essentially the opposite of what Sif had guessed she was going to say.

“Four.”

“Zero and I call security.”

“Three hours,” Loki said. “And in the picture, he’s sweaty and happy from hunting.”

Oza and Loki stared each other down. Sif took the pause to step back so that she wasn’t basically lying on top of him. “You have a deal,” Oza said. “But if you are one minute late in leaving, I’m calling the guards.” She looked between Loki and Sif. “And don’t have sex on the books.”  She glared at both of them once more for good measure before she cursed, spun on her heels, and marched away. Loki and Sif stood in silence as they listened to her angry feet stomp away.

“That could have gone better,” Sif said.

Loki turned around and started pulled books off the shelf at random. “We’re not fleeing. That makes for a nice change at least.” And Sif knew that the conversation that they’d been having before was over and done. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to start it up again. When it came to Loki, she wasn’t sure about a lot.

(She was, however, sure about this: When they  _did_  end up fleeing the Cathedral a few hours later with Oza’s signed copy of  _Blood, Rust, and War: The War of Gold Crowns_  in hand, that was objectively Loki’s fault, no matter how many stacks of books Sif had knocked over as a distraction.)

(The sex they had on the travel books, though, Sif was definitely willing to take some of the fall for that one.)


	4. Midgard: The Realm of Humans

  _I remember of yore were born the Jotuns,_

_They who aforetime foster me:_

_Nine worlds I remember, nine in the Tree,_

_The glorious Fate Free that springs ‘neath the Earth._

_Er, yes, it was nine. Was it nine? Yes. Nine._

_Nine worlds I remember, nine—wait, let me count them._

_Jotunheim, Midgard, Asgard, Muspelheim,_

_Niflheim….er, there’s two for the elves and one for dwarves._

_That’s, hold on, that’s…eight, I’m missing one._

_There’s so many, can’t keep them all straight._

_Asgard, Midgard, Jotunheim…Vanaheim!_

_Oh, that was embarrassing. That’s it, that’s all ten._

_I mean nine. Let’s stick with nine. The Lord knows_

_There’s too many of them already._

> —The little known first draft of  _Poetic Eddas_.

 

Sif liked fishing. Her father and her father’s father and her father’s father’s father and so on back to the dawn of creation, they had all been fisherman which meant that they had all had fisherwoman wives. And people wondered how Sif came to be so strong. Though her family had been recently ennobled for contributions to the war, they still lived close to the water that was their livelihood, and Sif knew well every fish that swam through Asgard’s seas.

But Midgardian fish were something different all together.

“Look, look!” she called to Loki, who was reclined on the other side of Skidbladnir, reading the small book that he had carried with him from Angrboda. More than two months now he had been reading it, and Sif did not think he was past the first page.

“Is it a fish?” he asked without looking up.

“Just look.”

Loki sighed. “How many dozens of fish will it take to— _what is that_.”

Sif spread her hands excitedly. “I know!” she said ecstatically. Loki closed the book and tucked it into his back pocket as he came over to look at the strange specimen flopping around on deck. “Do you mind?” she asked, gesturing vaguely at the creature, and in a moment it floated in a shimmering bubble of water.

“Wait till it calms and you’ll see how large it has puffed itself up,” she said.

Loki moved the ball of water this way and that as he puzzled at the strange creature. The look of intense curiosity on his face was the only familiar part of his look. Only two and a half months off Asgard, and he looked like a different man. His tangled black hair was pulled back into a loose pony tail, fastened with a strip of cloth he’d tore from the bottom of one of his tunics. For the last week as they’d sailed through the vast oceans under the heat of the Midgardian sun, he’d abandoned tunics all together and rolled his britches until they hit his knees. Sif had followed suit, though she kept her breastband on. Most of the time at least. Some of the time. She put it back on every now and then. It was a strange novelty, being warm enough to leave your breasts out without fear the wind chill would slice them off. Both Sif and Loki were enjoying the experience quite nicely.

“I call it a puff-fish,” Sif said. “Go ahead, make fun of me for it.”

“I would,” Loki said, still staring down the fish who seemed to be staring back just as intently, “but I cannot think of a better one myself. Can we eat it?”

“We can try,” Sif said doubtfully. “I’m not sure if there’s any meat in there though, or if my puff-fish is nothing but air. And he looks less tasty than interesting. I’m not sure he’s worth the bother. Speaking off, how is your book?”

“Lovely transition,” he said dryly. “The translation is almost nonexistent right now, the language is so old. Still, unlike you with your fish, I can hardly cast my net back into the sea if I dislike my find. I must make do with what scraps you’ve left me with.”

And there it was. Somehow, they always circled back to this. “I know you stole dozens of books from every single library we visited in Vanaheim. Don’t pretend this is all you have. How long do you plan to be spiteful about this?” she said sharply. “Simply until the end of our journey or shall you carry your ill-will back to Asgard? If you care that much of the palace of Angrboda, journey back. You can disguise yourself easily enough and read your fill of barbarian texts.”

“I care not at all, Sif,” he said like he was too good to be having this conversation.

“Then why are you still pricking me with it?”

“Am I pricking you?” he sneered. “Are you that delicate?”

“Not so delicate as you,” she said. “How much time and energy must I spend dancing round your wounded pride until you return the favor?”

“Have I been tramping on you?” he asked coldly. “As I quest with you and you alone across the universe when I could have easily left you at home?”

“I am not yours to leave at home,” she spat.

“You’re not mine to bring either apparently, and yet here you are on my ship, travelling with my magic, my knowledge, my planning.”

Sif flung out her arms and gestured at the wide expanse of nothing around them. “We’re floating in the middle of an ocean looking for a sentient turtle island you read about over a century ago. Such knowledge, such planning. I’m deeply impressed.”

“It was your idea to chase a fairy tale!”

“It was your idea to follow through with it!” Sif jabbed a finger in his direction. “I merely spoke the plan,  _you_  turned it into action.”

Loki laughed triumphantly. “So you admit it was a bad plan.”

“You just took credit for planning. You don’t get to take credit for planning and then insult me because it’s a bad plan.”

“The bad part of the plan is your part. My part is great!”

“Really?  _Really?_  Where’s the turtle island, Loki?” Sif stared him down, her arms still flung out for some reason. “Does it even exist, Loki? Does it even exist?”

“ _The turtle island is very real—_ oh, damn it, we need to talk to other people.” Loki stomped over to the boat’s edge and slumped over the side, his head resting in his hands. “Gods above gods, seven days is too many days with nothing to do.”

Sif’s arms fell to her side. She leaned back against her own side of Skidbladnir and squinted up into the blinding sickly yellow sun. “I hate Midgard,” she said.

 “Yes,” Loki said without raising his head.

“I hate you too,” she said.

“Yes,” Loki said again.

“Nothing personal. It’s just that the sound of your voice by now sounds like a jackal baying in my ear.”

“The sentiment is mutual, though I’d think you like me better than ever now.” Loki straightened and grabbed the wall, stretching back as far as he could without letting go. “You said yourself you like me best miserable.”

Between them, the puff-fish floated as one fraction of its former size, its rage nothing more than air and spikes. She ought to have named it after Loki, for all she suspected more substance laid at the heart of him.

“I don’t like you best when you’re miserable,” she said, and he glanced at her wryly. “I like you best when you’re not an utter prick.” She shrugged. “That happens more when you’re sad.”

He blinked at her and then he snorted. “So misery makes me more palatable. Interesting coming from you, Sif. You can hardly talk for snarling save for when you’re depressed.”

 He turned and stared off into the endless blue waters mirrored in the clear blue skies. They hadn’t seen land since they’d sailed in. Midgard was the largest of all the realms, nearly three times larger than Asgard itself, but its surface was mostly water. How isolated and lonely the little intelligent life this realm could support must feel. Sif’d only gone a week on the water, and she could feel herself changing. She wanted Loki all the more. She couldn’t look at his face one more time.

This morning, they’d lain on the deck together for a few hours, simply curled around each other’s body even as the sweat of their bare skin made them stick and chafe together. She’d never slept with him before this journey, not in the literal sense, and not until they’d landed in the utter inaction of Midgard had they had the time to just…sleep. They could sleep and sleep and sleep as Skidbladnir gently rocked, and why not sleep together? Except that was—dangerous. Not the kind Sif liked. It was the kind where your arm went numb because someone else’s sleeping body was pinning it down, and you kept it there because you didn’t want to wake them. The wrong kind of danger.

Sif reached into the little bubble of water and plucked the puff-fish out by the tail. With the flick of her wrist, she tossed it into the sea. “Be free,” she said as it plopped into the water. “Tell the turtle island to come, if you could be so kind.”

“Or don’t,” Loki shouted after it. He looked at Sif wryly. “It might cheer us up.”

“Oh yes, save us from that dark fate,” she said.

“As long as we stay on Midgard,” he said, “I think we’ll be safe.”

“I hate Midgard,” Sif said.

“So you’ve said.”

“We should leave now.”

“Right now.”

After a long, long pause, Sif added, “But I do love fishing.”

“And I do have dozens of books to read to plan where we can go next.”

 “What is the next place we are planning to visit?” Sif asked.

“Muspelheim,” Loki replied. “The realm of the eternal flames, the fires of creation. The hottest place in the Nine Realms.”

They looked at each other for a moment longer and considered how very, very hot that realm must be. And how in contrast, perhaps the warm Midgardian sun that did little more than make you want to take a nap at noon—maybe the two of them needed to stay a little longer under it. For practice. For being hot.

“Perhaps a few more days,” Sif said. “The turtle island might turn up any moment now.”

Loki laughed. And he was wrong, or Sif supposed she had been when she’d told him what she’d said—she liked him best honestly happy. “It might,” Loki said as he sat back down in his corner and opened his book again. “It is, after all,  _very_  real.”


	5. Muspelheim: The Realm of Fire

_Fire. Burn. Through the gap._

_Fire. Sear. Through the flesh._

_Fire. Eat. Through the meat._

_Fire. Dig. Through the Tenth._

> _—_ Inscription by unknown author on the wall of the giant Surt’s palace, one of the oldest recorded pieces of writing in the Nine Realms. 

 

“No,” Loki said bluntly.

Sif stared at him from the bottom of the loading ramp. Muspelheim was, by the way, just as horrific as Sif had feared. But she was at least managing to be stoic about it. “Just get off the boat, Odinsson.”

“This realm is too impossibly hot. I refuse. I care not if the secret to the Tenth Realm lies a foot from where you stand. I am staying on the ship, and I am sailing away.”

“A true scholar would pursue knowledge no matter the price.”

“Then I am false as the lowest knave,” Loki said, “if that means not  _burning to death_.”

“It’s fine out here.”

“It’s a fiery wasteland, Sif. We sailed in on a river of lava.”

“This is the second oldest realm in creation.  _You_  were the one who said that the texts said there was evidence of a Tenth Realm here or at the very least a key to that book of yours.”

“I also told you that public drunkenness wasn’t a crime in Vanaheim and we literally just broke out of prison. I’m willing to admit that there are gaps in my knowledge.”

“Now who is holding the quest back?” she said.

“Neither of us has ever held our quest back. By definition we cannot. Whatever we do, that is the quest. I prefer to quest elsewhere. Preferably somewhere where it does not feel like my skin is going to schluff off.”

“Oh, it’s our quest now?

Loki wasn’t leaning on the railing anymore so much as slumped over it. “Sif, it is so hot. We need to go.”

“If our quest is whatever we do, then why are you still so irked by what happened at Angrboda?”

“Truly, Sif? You’re going to ask that now?”

“You bring it up twice a day,” she pointed out in the ultra-reasonable tone of voice she knew he hated most. “It must mean something. Did you date a Jotun there? Did you slip and crack your head on the ice? Was the lore room  _truly_  that interesting? It must be something spectacular for—”

“Because it’s beautiful!”Loki snapped. She stared at him. “Because in all of the Nine Realms, I have never seen a place as beautiful as the Jotun Queen’s palace, and when I took you there, you activated its defenses and partially  _melted_  it. With the Jotuns’ weakened magic, it will take decades to restore it, so I must wait decades to see it again in all its splendor and glory.”

“That’s it?” she asked incredulously.

“That’s it, Sif,” he said. “That’s the entire reason. Now will you get back on the ship before I melt as well? We’ll return to once more to Vanaheim and head to Niflheim. That realm is even more ancient than Muspelheim. If there are clues anywhere, they will be in Niflheim. ”

Sif got back on the ship. She didn’t know what to say. So she settled for saying nothing and Loki responded in kind and together they left the realm of fire ten minutes after the entered it. 


	6. Niflheim: The Realm of Ice

 

_The Fate Tree gives us bounty:_

_Twelve rivers,_

_Four wells,_

_Ten branches,_

_One trunk._

_Praise to the Parent Ash!_

> _—_ Ode by unknown author chiseled into a rock by the well Hvergelmir and one of the oldest recorded pieces of writing in the Nine Realms.

 

“I hope you will take the high ground about this,” Sif said from underneath about seventeen furs and still shivering, “and remember all the times I have gracefully accepted your foibles and discomforts.”

Loki, damn him, looked perfectly at home among the swirling ice mist. “You have never done that. You mock me almost all the time.”

“Believe me, Loki, with you, I could be so much harsher.”

“Come now, Sif. You won’t step out even for a quick walk?”

“Maybe to stab you in the face.”

“That would require you from coming out from under your furs.”

Sif straightened up and then immediately regretted it as the movement let a spike of cold air in. “Let’s move on to the realm with any warmth,” she said as she curled into the fetal position. “I will forget your cowardice in Muspelheim and never mention it again if you forget mine here.”

“These cold worlds make you quite unmanly,” he said lightly. “A true warrior would pursue her quest no matter what discomfort she felt.”

Sif squeezed her eyes shut and cursed to herself. “You’re right,” she said quietly.

“Pardon?” Loki replied.

Sif gritted her teeth and stood. In an instant, she was colder than she had ever been. Movement, movement would help, she thought. This was no different from bracing herself in the early winter mornings to do her exercises before the other pages, trainers, and warriors even woke up. She took one shuddering breathe and stepped one foot forward. She felt like she’d jumped a mile in one step.

Skidbladnir shook, and she lost her fragile footing immediately, hitting the deck with a wince. She turned to see Loki striding back to the helm of the ship, steering it back out to the portal they’d found their way here through. “No,” she said. “I can do this.”

“You cannot,” he said, “and you’ll die in the process. I’ve enough magic on me to outlast a Frost Giant in a blizzard, and I can barely feel my limbs.”

“No!” It took almost more strength than she had to push herself back to her feet.

“We’re going—”

“Good!” she said. “But I will set foot on this realm before we go.”

“It makes no difference either way.”

“It does!” she howled and stumbled. He reached out to grab her and she shook herself away. “It does. Without the leave of the king, I may never travel after Partition. Do you think he will grant it to me?”

“Sif, you are my friend,” Loki said. “Do you think I cannot get you such privileges?”

She shook her head, and her hair clinked with ice. “I will earn them, or they are not mine to use. You are right , Loki, you did not have to bring me on this quest, but you have privileged me with travel and I owe you my thanks. This may be the only quest I get to go on and I will not waste it. I will step foot on every realm in Yggdrasil for I may never see them again.”

“Travel is not a privilege,” Loki said. “But if you must do this now, do it before you freeze to death.”

Sif nodded. She turned and stumbled her way to the ramp. Loki did not reach out to help her. She appreciated that greatly. Each step was like walking on daggers, the cold was so strong and hateful. Walking through it was like pressing yourself to broken glass and then pressing on. Sif pressed on and her right foot reached down and buried itself in the snows of Niflheim.

Hands reached under her arms and pulled her back as Skidbladnir creaked and rose. “Well done,” Loki said, his chest pressed against her back, his arms wrapped around her chest. She felt no warmth from him, but she sunk back against his body anyway as he dragged her back to the ship’s underbelly.

“I’m sorry I melted your favorite place,” she croaked as the ship sped over snow and ice.

“You were picking a fight with a child. It happens. And I might have...behaved not well in response.”

They reached the lower decks which were enchanted against the elements and together let out such a sigh of relief as they’d never made before. “Not well,” Sif quoted. Loki hoisted her up and carried her to the bed. She was perfectly capable of walking by now. She saw no need to point that out. “Say the words ‘I am sorry,’” she told him as he sat her on the bed and knelt to untie her snow encrusted boots.

He pulled them off and her stockings with them. “Does it matter?” he said. His long fingers went to work on the fastenings of her breast plate.

“Yes.”

Off came her armor. “Then I’m sorry.”

“I don’t believe you,” Sif murmured as he unfastened the lacing of her britches. “Come warm me up and show me how sorry you are.”

And here, yes, oh, yes, Loki seemed very, very sorry indeed, and Sif found she was very able to forgive him, for now, any sin he may have wrought.


	7. Alfheim: The Realm of Light

 

 _The Tenth Realm Hypothesis emerged at the end of the Gold Peace and in many ways characterizes the conditions of the Silver Peace. After two hundred years of rapid Aesir, Vanir, and Light Elf expansion outwards, the mood of the times suddenly and, to the ignorant observer, inexplicably changed. What we see in the fifty year period of the Summer Starfall is the shift from imperial expansion to domestic consolidation. Frigga, Queen of Asgard, enacted her comprehensive Solstice Reforms of Aesir farming. Lisle Blacknight, starborn knight of Alfheim, opened the first of the Southern Fever Hospitals in the Dalloway bar Dallo region. Skald Tyrald, head bard of the Vanir, published her seminal work in praise of the average family,_ In the Time for the Return: The Bud Blooms Backwards to the Seed _, that prompted a realmwide reevaluation of the importance home life._

_What prompted this inter- and intrarealm shift of focus and what has this to do with the Cult of Ten that arose in Alfheim? This humble observer seeks to argue over the course of the paper that all were connected to this—all at once, we realized that we had found all the worlds that there could ever be, and we all handled that horror differently._

> —From the introduction to “Behind These Mountains, Only Stars,” by Elisian se baro ek Elisio, maester of the School on the Mountain and one of Loki’s childhood tutors. 

 

It was supposed to be a quiet hike. The dragon was an interesting twist.

Sif held on for dear life as the beast rocketed through the sky, spewing flames and bile on the forest underneath. This high up, Sif couldn’t hear the screaming anymore, but she knew the townspeople must still be down there and in massive numbers. The Asgardian procession had attracted people from miles around. That massive crowd that Loki and Sif had pushed their way through not fifteen minutes earlier must all be trembling underneath the worm’s burning wings.

She clenched her thighs around the dragon’s neck as tightly as she could and used both her hands to plunge her sword into the dragon’s skull. It didn’t work—the blade glanced off the scales without so much as denting them. The beast roared with anger anyway and twisted in the sky as Sif lunged forward to grab on again. She barely managed to hold onto both her sword and the dragon as it spiraled through the sky. She needed a different plan of attack. The dragon’s eyes were an obvious target, but since they were currently weeping tears of liquid flames, Sif wasn’t so sure that any of her blades would do any damage. But then again, she was clinging to a dragon’s neck by her thighs right now. Sif didn’t have much to lose.

As she sheathed her sword and pulled out her boot knives, she couldn’t recall ever being so happy before.

“Beast!” Sif shouted and banged her fists against its neck scales. “You ugly, foul creature, look at me!”  Roaring, rearing, it was more than happy to oblige her. As it twisted around, its great mouth gaping at her like a black hole with fangs, she lunged. The dragon wasn’t expecting that. Things it roared at typically ran the other way, and the brief pause of surprise was all she needed. Quick as lighting, she stuck a blade in both eyes as once. When it opened its mouth to scream, she sliced the tongue off as well. Its jaws clamped shut, and Sif narrowly avoided losing a hand to the blinded, thrashing dragon.

They weren’t flying anymore. Now they were falling as the wings beat blindly with pain. This wasn’t an improved situation. The dragon was still spewing fire indiscriminately, only now it was out of pain as much as spite. Sif needed to ground it  _now._ The dragon’s body might be too hard to pierce with blades, but she grabbed the ears and pulled. The beast reared up with Sif clinging on as they climbed straight up into the sky—which was, in fact, the opposite of what she needed so Sif yanked harder and now they were both upside-down. Sif’s legs tightened until she felt like they were going to fall off as the wings struggled and flailed at an angle they were never supposed to flap in.

They fell, plummeting to the ground like a rock. Sif braced herself and jumped as far as she could within two meters from the ground. She hit the grass and rolled, popping into combat position with her sword in hand. The dragon had hit head-first. Its skull was stronger than the ground, but it was a near thing and now on top of being blind, it had a cracked head as well. It bellowed with fire as Sif circled, thrashing this way and that as it tore the ground apart looking for her.

There was only one soft spot on the creature and fire was currently spewing from it. Well—if it was easy to be a warrior anyone would do it.

“If you want me,” she bellowed, “come and get me!” Its head snapped to Sif’s position and in the split second between it opening its mouth and the fire coming out, she rushed over and thrust the tip of her blade up with all the strength she possessed. It hit the roof of the mouth and kept going, the acidic dragon’s blood burning her hands as it poured down. When the tip hit the bottom of the skull, she dug her feet so hard into the ground that it cracked underneath her. The dragon’s skull did the same under her blade. She pushed it up again and again until the dragon slumped, and she jumped back as it fell to the forest floor with a crash.

As the beast twitched its last, she wiped her burning hands on fallen leaves, trying to get as much of the smoking blood off her as possible. She remembered her canteen strapped to her belt, packed this morning when today was supposed to be nothing more than a hike up the Solljus Mount to find a spring Loki had read about in Vanaheim where bathers often found themselves setting out into a different forest than the one they walked in to. She was holding out hope that they’d still make it up the mountain. The springs seemed more appealing now than ever.

She tugged the lid of the canteen of with her teeth and took a long swig of the ice cold water (still frosty despite its proximity to dragonfire courtesy of Loki’s enchantment) before she dumped the rest of it on her hands. “Audhumla’s tit,” Sif cursed as the water sizzled against her new burns. But the pain was manageable now, and the washed away blood couldn’t do anymore damage to her. She looked over at the foul worm, now still. The blood’s source couldn’t do any more damage either.

“Amazing!” exclaimed a voice behind her, a voice familiar enough to make Sif freeze. She turned her head to see Thor Odinsson, hammer in hand, helmet on head, beaming at her like they were old friends. Sif wiped her blade on the grass and sheathed it as she stood. “I came to slay the beast, and you have stolen my prize, swordwoman.” He didn’t sound angry about it, not in the slightest. He was still beaming as he walked forwards, looking at her like she was—well, like she was amazing. “What manner of maiden do they grow in Alfheim that they can slaughter dragons while the world burns around them?”

He didn’t recognize her. Seven years she had served in his Great Hall, and he did not know her at all. “I know not what manner of maiden in fair Alfheim grows,” she said coldly, using the language she’d learned as a lady-in-waiting. “I hail from a darker realm where women grow as hearty oaks in the shadows of lesser trees.”

Thor studied her closer. “You look familiar, lady. What realm is it you speak of?”

Sif raised her chin. “I speak of Asgard, Prince of Lightning, realm of the All-Mother and her valkyrie of old.”

Thor gawped, and Sif appreciated the reaction very much. “You are not the page girl? Not Lady Hedvig’s old lady-in-waiting who quit the perfumed life?”

“Aye, your highness, Prince of my King,” Sif replied.

“But you should not be a page!” Thor protested.

“Oh, yes, my Prince, I am well aware what you and your kind think of women like me,” Sif retorted. “You—”

“You should be a guard, at least!”

“Oh, yes, I—what.”

“A guard!” Thor took off his helmet and ran his hand through his hair, his very nice hair. “At the very least. But that will not do for you, dragonslayer. A king’s guard. A queen’s guard. A knight of the realm even! No, no,” he said suddenly, shaking his head. “That’s not proper.” That was more what Sif was expecting. “Those jobs are all bound to remain in Asgard. You must be free to travel. Travel with me!”

Sif blinked at him. She cleared her throat. “Ah. What?”

“Join the procession! You can travel with Hogun—he’s new as well. Or Fandrall would be thrilled to dine with you.” Thor flipped Mjolnir as if it were light as air and laughed. It was a very nice laugh. It was the sort of laugh that demanded that you laugh with it. She’d heard it before many times, booming through the halls of the castle, and she’d thought it pleasant until the day Thor had directed it at her when she’d asked him to accept her into his procession.

Thor had accepted her into his procession.

“I cannot, my lord,” she said a little numbly, “though I thank you for the offer with all my heart. I have a quest of my own that I am on.”

“I feared that, Lady,” Thor said. “You look too fierce to be a mere traveler.” It was interesting to compare him to his brother. Loki’s grin was smug. Thor’s now was cocky. It was no difference and it was every difference.

She still couldn’t believe that this was happening, that she was talking to Asgard’s greatest warrior while standing next to a dragon she’d just murdered. Speaking of—she walked over to the corpse and grabbed the largest scale on the beast’s back and pulled. With a crack, the scale broke off in her hand. “When you return to Asgard, it would be my honor to accompany you on a hunt,” she said because when impossible things are happening, what’s one more to the list?

He laughed again and Sif smiled tentatively. “The honor would be mine. Will you not at least join us at the feast? We’ve a dozen bards who’d write a poem in your honor.”

Sif wavered before she shook her head. “My—my friend must be looking for me. The last he saw, I jumped on the back of a dragon.”

“A most worrisome exit,” Thor agreed. “He should have been the one who jumped. Shame him for that in my stead.”

Sif bowed and walked away from Thor, keeping her eyes on him the entire time. She needed to get out of her. Her entire body was thrumming with adrenaline and she needed to either crash or scream it out, and neither would impress the crown prince. “It worked better this way, I’m sure. Goodbye, Prince Thor.”

“Fare thee well, Lady Sif.  Although,” he said as she walked away, “I could insist you come.”

One eyebrow raised, Sif looked back and nodded at the dragon’s corpse. “I could resist.”

“I’m tougher than a dragon.”

“But more gentlemanly, I hope.”

He laughed again.  _I understand you_ , thought the cold, calculating voice in Sif’s head that sometimes sounded too much like Loki’s.  _To keep you pliable, keep you entertained._  “More gentlemanly than is for my own good,” he said cheerfully. “Were I more of a cad, I’d woo the fearsome dragonslayer with all my considerable charm. But I am too good.”

And now both Sif’s eyebrows were raised. “You could woo a little,” she said because she was still a little drunk off the dragon killing and she’d be lying if she said that she hadn’t thought about it. (Not that she planned to swap brothers or anything like that. When she thought about it, in fact, Loki was still very much present, very much active. It was something she liked thinking about quite a lot.)

Thor smiled and shook his head ruefully. “Another man has his eye upon you,” he said.

Sif bristled. “I am not a prize one man may claim.”

“Nevertheless. I know who you are, Lady Sif. I have heard your name sighed many times. I am not always a careful man,” and this he said with a look that wasn’t quite repentant, “but I can practice tact now and then.”

 _If you wish to woo a maiden, brother. keep her near you_. The words came back to Sif in a flash as a blush rose to her cheeks. She raised her head higher and called it the flush of battle. “I read your book recently,” she said in response, and Thor started.  _See?_ She wanted to say.  _I know something intimate of you as well._ “It was as good as I’d heard.”

Thor looked almost sheepish. That was a look she’d never seen on his face before, either in this conversation or all her years running through the palace. “I thank you, Lady, though I am the poorer scholar of my family.”

“Are you?” she asked.

“Indeed!” And if she had thought Thor’s face was light before, now he shined like the sun. “Loki studies right now back home to become a Fifth Form scholar. There are less than a thousand such men in all of Asgard. It is why he could not come on our progression.”

“He wouldn’t interrupt his studies for the realm? How rude.”

“I would not let him! One of us will sit on the throne, Lady Sif,” Thor said. “At least one of us ought to know what we are doing.” That was not a phrase Sif would use to describe Loki. Thor regarded her and for a moment the boy slid away and the man he would be stood before her, with a king’s contemplation upon his face. It was a good look. “My brother is a strange man,” he said. “But he is good one with a good heart.”

Sif paused. “Yes, I believe you’re right,” she said and bowed again. “Fare thee well, Prince.”

Thor tipped his golden head to her.

“Where in the Realms have you been?” Loki exclaimed when she found him again, ten or so miles back up the mountain. He grabbed her, his hands patting her up and down for injury as he stared at her wild-eyed. “When it flew out of the cave and you jumped on it—Sif, it had not seen us. You could have let it fly. Are you hurt? Where is the dragon now?”

Sif held up her swollen, burned fingers clutching the dragon scale as an answer.

He stared at it, incredulous. “You slew it?”

“With my own blades and your own knives.”

He grabbed her by the head and kissed her hard. “Well done. That’s a quest in and of itself.”

Sif bumped her forehead against his. Then she kept it there. “Thank you. I know.”

“You provoked a wild animal and then killed it for personal gain.”

“Are you proud or not?”

“I can be proud and scornful at the same time.”

“Most people cannot.”

“I am not most people. Neither are you. You killed a dragon.” He rested both his hands on her shoulders and smiled at her. “It probably had children.”

“Stop.”

“Young, innocent dragon babies.”

She smacked him lightly on the cheek and stepped back. “Do you want to reach this spring or not?”

“I do. If for no one reason that we need to soak your hands. There’s worse poisons dragon blood, but we need to treat your burns quickly.” Loki said as he picked up her pack and started to walk. “Though there is, in truth, another reason. I had not realized the Asgardian procession was so close to the Mount.”

“So we’re fleeing them.”

“Precisely. I have no desire to see any of them.”

“Not even your brother?” she asked carefully.

“No, him I would like to see. I miss him much,” Loki said, much to her surprise. She wouldn’t have been so coy about her quest partner with Thor if she’d known Loki wanted to see him. “But he’ll strong-arm us into staying with him for the last month of the journey. He’s very persuasive. He usually gets what he wants.”

“Not always,” Sif said coyly.

“And what does that mean?” Loki asked.

“Come now,” she said. “You’re the finer scholar of the family. Surely you can deduce.”

Sif would tell him about Thor. But it was a long walk up the Mount. Even dragonslayers must make their own fun now and then.


	8. Nidavellir: The Realm of Dwarves

 

_How long will you love me?_

_Till the three wells run dry._

_How long will you love me?_

_Till the war horn’s last cry._

_How long will you love me?_

_Till the last gold forge burns._

_How long will you love me?_

_Till the Tenth Realm returns._

> _—_ Common marriage ballad amongst the Eslov Dwarves of Stader. 

 

Sif was used to the smell of blood, but after five days in the dungeons the bitter scent of rust turned her stomach. Still she breathed through her nose and smelled it deep. When she breathed through her mouth, she could taste it, like jagged copper on the back of her tongue. And she wouldn’t breathe through her mouth even if it had helped. She wouldn’t give herself a comfort Loki was denied.

He slept now, at last, his head resting in her lap. It was the only soft place in the cell, and so there was no softness left for her. She shifted for a more comfortable position against the rock at her back and froze when Loki started shifting in kind. He turned so that the flickering torchlight from the hallway fell through the slatted window and onto his twisted lips stitched shut with thick, black thread.

It was only the weight of the key stolen from their guard and hidden in her palm that had stopped her from killing the dwarves herself when they at last returned him to her, his face and neck streaked with his own blood. She still planned to rip them limb from limb as she and Loki escaped, of course. But only Loki knew where he had hidden Skidbladnir, and without it she had no weapons and no escape route. They expected her to attack when they’d brought him back. They wanted an excuse to strike her down while she was weak. She wouldn’t give it to them.

When she looked away from his eyes, Sif saw Loki looking back up at her. His eyes were curiously serene. She wondered if he was not still half-asleep. Perhaps like his father, sleep healed him better than most. Sif gently touched her thumb to the corner of his lips. “This is a very stupid plan.”

Loki twisted his hand, and the air shimmered to her left. “You know as well as I that there was no other way into Hreidmar’s palace,” an illusion of Loki said. He looked far cleaner than the current one resting in her lap, like the way he looked on Asgard. The lips were a fair prettier sight, but Sif found to her amazement that the rest of him paled in comparison to the current model. The most fastidious man she knew looked best mussed, dirty, and bloody. That wouldn’t make him happy. “Everything is still going as it should.”

“So you planned on getting your lips stitched shut.”

“Er,” illusion Loki said, which was answer enough.

“What did you say to the dwarf king?” she asked exasperatedly, her eyes flicking between the Loki in the lap and the illusion sitting across from her.

“I promise, I was charming as charming could be,” Loki protested. Sif snorted. “I swear. The dwarves are furious over Partition. Even more a, we’ll say, ‘consistently diplomatic’ Aesir would have suffered at his hands.”

Sif’s hands tightened on Loki. “Did he do anything else?” she asked, her face hot with rage.

“I think the lips are enough, and we’ll leave them in rather than tempt them to redo the procedure,” Loki replied. He patted her white-knuckled hands. “I cried and pleaded so that I doubt he thought that any more was necessary. The simple merchant Egill Sturluson, after all, has no experience with great pain.”

“So you think he still knows not that you are the prince.”

“That is the plus side of Thor’s publicity tour. He is their image of the royal family, and I am nothing like him.”

“He’ll learn sooner or later,” Sif warned. “You said yourself, his mages are some of the most powerful in the Realms.”

Illusion Loki shook his head while the real thing curled tighter against her, burying his face in her stomach. She ran her hands through his hair as she had when he’d been sleeping. By now she’d pulled nearly all of the tangles out. “They’re consumed with subverting Partition,” Loki said. “They don’t care about me.” He smirked a little. “I’m beginning to see the perks of obscurity.”

“Obscurity is why they think they can shove us in their cells for Mimir only knows how long. I’ve been obscure most of my life, save for when I’m notorious. I’d rather have the safety of a little bit of fame right now.”

“Considering that we’re planning to rob them of some of the oldest texts in existence, as well as whatever treasures we can get our hands on,” Loki drawled, “I’d rather not advertise my position as a prince of their major trade ally. We cannot turn their threats of embargo into action.”

She sighed. “They may act without your provocation. They hate Partition more fiercely than any we’ve met but the Jotun.”

“Dwarves do love their free trade agreements. I wrote a book on it to pass Third Form, analyzing the history of trade tariffs between Asgard and Nidavellir since the establishment of the Upper Branch Coal and Gold Community.”

“Not to be an ass to a man with his lips stitched shut,” Sif said, “but have you considered that topics like that might be why your brother’s book is so much more popular than your own?”

“Many time, bitterly, usually late at night while slightly drunk. Someday people will find interrealm trade interesting,” Loki said. 

“But that is not this day.” In her lap, Loki shook with a snort of laughter. She worked her fingers through his hair again and again as she pondered. “In Niflheim, you said travel was not a privilege.”

“It’s not,” Loki said. “I’m amazed you heard that through all the snow in your ears.”

“Do you think it a right then?”

She wondered it Loki chose to make his illusion look so pained for a moment or if that was simply his feelings spilling out. “As a prince of the realm, I support the strengthening of our borders in protection of the hard-earned peace.”

“And as simply Loki?”

“There is no such man. But if there were, he’d believe that everyone who hates us for it has every right to. I’ve been traveling between realms since I was old enough to slip away from the palace. That is how I have escaped the stresses of my studies and my crown all my life. To be told now that I must seek a ‘by you leave’ from my own father to travel to places I have visited since I could sit upon his knee—” He broke off, his lips pressed as tightly together in his illusion as they were in reality. “It matters not though. Partition will pass. It cannot stop  _all_  unauthorized travel, but it will halt the vast majority of it. And Asgard will have secured their empire more completely than any empire since creation.”

 “And you’re against that.”

“Don’t put words in my mouth,” Loki said. “I’ve already got blood and thread crowding in there. Asgard is my realm and I support anything that adds to its glory. People are right to hate us for Partition, yes, and I dislike it personally myself. But the needs of the throne differ from the wants of those who sit in it. If the only way to keep Asgard safe was to destroy every other realm in the World Tree, I would do it without hesitation and mourn when I was done.”

“As you should,” Sif whispered. That is what it meant to love and serve. She gently pressed at Loki’s head until he turned to look up at her. “I know we’ve come to this place with bad intent. I know that all our pains are part of a larger plan. And I know they are our allies. But I swear to you, I will kill any dwarf that caused you harm.”  

The real Loki had no words for her. He nuzzled his cheek against his stomach, his eyes bright and narrowed.  _Good_ , they seemed to be saying. Every oath worth making need a mark, so Sif leaned down and gently as she could she ghosted her lips over Loki’s bloody mouth and sealed the promise with a kiss.


	9. Svartalfheim: The Realm of Shadows

 

 _Swallow the moon. Drown the sun. Pinch out the stars one by one. You don’t need the light. You never did. Your eyes will see all they need to. Without the din of brightness, your ears will hear the whispers of the world. Your hands are firm and strong. Reach forward. Touch. The universe was made to be touched. You and it will both survive the experience. Touch. There’s much to be afraid of in the dark, but nothing so cruel as what sprawls in the light. It is not the shadows that lie to you but the fire. Snuff out the fire. Join us in the multitudes. We wait for you. Walk towards our voices. There is another world here in the dark. It’s always been here._ You  _left_ it.  _It waits for you as well. Turn out the lights. Sweep up the stars. Grope blindly forward into the night. Find your way home._

> —“Exaltation” by Algrim, hand of the Dark King.

 

Svartalfheim was, as they’d learned in schools, a desolate wasteland of long-ago wars, but as with most things Sif had learned, that lesson was incomplete. The main battleground, yes, that was little more than black silt under a black sky with a sun that burned grey through the dust clouds. But Loki had sailed them quickly through this part of the realm, telling her that there was nothing left worth looking at, and when they passed the last grey hill of ash and soot, Sif found that she was still not yet numbed to the glory of the realms.

“It’s beautiful,” she gasped at the shining black cliffs that jutted from the ground to pierce the clouds.  

“I know,” Loki said smugly as if he had anything to do with the way the silver-blue trees with leaves like broken glass shattered against the sapphire sky. “Before the Dark Elves fled the sun to their underground cities, before my grandfather wiped them all out, they lived in the darkness of their planet’s surface. What texts we do have from that period indicate that they thought theirs the most beautiful of all possible worlds, and that what you see now in the light of the sun is a diluted horror compared to what used to be.”

“It looks beautiful enough to me,” Sif said.

“So says everyone who is not a Dark Elf,” Loki said as Skidbladnir skimmed over the glass surface of the planet, so shining and reflective that when Sif leaned over the edge of the boat to look at it, she spied her own face. “They saw as we could not. And we see as the universe now demands we must.”

“And what a sight we see,” Sif said. “Still, there is only one problem: a tragic lack of cover.”

“Yes,” Loki said as the dwarvish ships came over the grey hills of the battleground, still hot in pursuit. “I was thinking just the same.”

The arrow hit the back of the boat with a solid crack. Sif pulled out her new bow, fresh from the Dwarf King’s treasury, and aimed it at the five crafts in pursuit. “Shall we kill them all?”

“There’s about three hundred of them,” Loki said, veering a hard left towards the glass forest.

Sif loosed an arrow and saw with satisfaction a splash of crimson from an enemy archer. “Afraid of those odds?”

“Yes. Duck.”

Sif ducked as the low-hanging branches whistled over her head. She crouched just tall enough to peer over the side of Skidbladnir. “They aren’t following. I don’t know why. Their ships are smaller than ours.”

“Yes, well, not everyone is as tragically brave as us.”

“What exactly does that mean?” Sif asked as the darkness of the forest started to crowd around them.

“It means we’re most likely free of the dwarves. Just mind the Shadow Walker.”

“The Shadow—” Sif cut herself off and renotched an arrow. “Did you just fly us into the Forest of Nightmares?”

Loki crashed to the left as something shapeless and howling dashed at them from the right. “Oh, you’ve heard of it?”

Sif loosed the arrow. It flew right through the swirling black mass and out the other side. “How do you kill it?” she shouted.

“If anyone knew, it wouldn’t still be alive!” Loki shouted back. “I’m trying to get us out of here as fast as I can.”

For all the good it was doing, Sif loosed arrow after arrow into the black mist. As it shifted and reformed, she swore she could see something glinting in the mass—something almost like eyes. “Loki! Where is the magic arrow we stole?”

Loki pivoted Skidbladnir so quickly she went skidding to the floor as the Shadow Walker lunged, bleeding scraps of dusty shadows in its wake.  “We stole about twenty magic arrows, Sif.  _You’re going to have to be more specific._ ”

“The glowing one! The special one! The one you wouldn’t shut up about!”

“You’re not firing that one, Sif. Use the other nineteen!”

“Why are you hoarding the demon killing arrow? We’re being chased by a demon!” The Shadow Walker’s—hands? Claws? Fangs?—its  _something_ scraped the back of Skidbladnir and the wood in the deep grooves rotten. Skidbladnir shook so harshly the bottom bumped against the forest floor before Loki got it back in the air. There was a buzzing rasp in the air that Sif swore was the Shadow Walker’s laughter.  “Loki!” she snapped. “Give me the damn arrow!”

“Fine! Fine!” The glowing obsidian arrow appeared in his hand and he looked down at it mournfully before he tossed it her way. She caught it with one hand and notched it in one fluid motion.

“Hold the ship steady!” she shouted as she leveled the bow. The swirling black mass behind them was getting closer and closer again. The shadows parted for just a moment and Sif could see it again—the glint of white light staring right at her. Sif exhaled and loosed the arrow. It flew truer than any she’d ever shot before. It was as if time had slowed as she watched. The arrow, a purer and darker black than the sickly shadows could ever dream of, shone like a midnight sun before it disappeared right into the heart of the white.

The resulting scream shattered the leaves from the trees just as Skidbladnir cleared the treeline. As the ship fled, the forest behind them shuddered and wailed and collapsed. Sif looked back in wonder and horror. “Is it dead?” she asked.

“No. The Shadow Walker is older than the realm it lives upon,” Loki replied after a pause that consisted of him slumping over the ship’s wheel and muttering a series of curse words at an almost, but not quite, inaudible level. “But I think you wounded it as it has not been wounded for a few centuries. With my one of a kind arrow.”

“It was put to good use,” Sif said as she collapsed to the ground.

Loki made an extremely dubious noise in the back of his throat. “Either way, we need to be in the caves by nightfall. The Shadow Walker has our scent, but it cannot climb very well.”

She lifted her head up. “Will it pursue us?”

 “Until we leave its realm. But its power weakens away from the Forest, and over rock it has almost none at all. We can stick to the mountains tonight before we return to Asgard tomorrow.”

And Sif sat up all the way. “Tomorrow? Why are we returning so soon?”

“Soon? Sif, it’s been six months. We need to return before Partition.”

Six months? Not yet. Not already. But Sif ticked off the days skulking through in the Dwarf King’s palace and the Light Elves’ sacred mountains, floating through clear blue oceans of Midgard where sky and sea were one, running through the black markets and grand churches of Vanaheim, and huddling for warmth along the straits of Jotunheim. And the time spent in travel. And the time spent in sleep. And the time spent at small dances held in the middle of darkened woods and the holiday services in churches they’d never heard of before and monsters lairs full of beasts that had ravaged the countryside before they’d arrived to kill them. “Six months indeed,” she whispered as Skidbladnir tilted to meet the mountain. “And we’ve found nothing.”

If Loki heard, he did not respond.

As the sun dipped below the ashy hills, they found a little ledge near the summit of a smaller peak with a little cave tucked into the mountain that went just enough back and had just enough height to accommodate two sleeping bodies. As Sif spread out the furs for bedding, Loki folded Skidbladnir up and tucked it in his pocket. “Its magic is almost gone,” he said.

She looked up in surprise. “I did not know it had a finite amount.”

He shrugged as he shed his cloak and then his shirt with it. The night air was warm, almost warmer than the day now that the winds had died.  “It did not matter. We have enough to get home.”

“You should have told me,” she said sharply.

He ducked into the cave and crawled past her to the space by the rock wall. He tossed his folded up cloak down as a pillow. “I tell you now.”

Sif scowled. “And what if the magic had not lasted?”

He looked at her pointedly. “Then I suppose we could never have found the Tenth Realm.” He fell facedown into the furs and turned away from her. “Thank the norns that failure did not befall us or that we did not waste half a year chasing something that does not exist.”

She was silent. The disappointment was as bitter in her mouth as it was in his, but she suspected it was for a different reason. “Failure?” she asked. “You reduce the last six months to failure and nothing else?” Loki did not respond, though the line of his bare back was as tight with tension as it had been when he laid down. If she touched him, she knew he’d flinch away. “I would not trade this failed quest for grander glory,” Sif said quietly. “Success would profit me no more than what we have accomplished in its place.”

“What have we accomplished?” he asked softly.

And what a stupid question that was. If he didn’t know by now, Sif couldn’t tell him. “You wanted to run from our problems. I’d say we did very well,” she said as she crawled out of the cave. “I’ll take first watch. I’d like to see a little more of Svartalfheim before the sun sets.”

There was such a long silence that she thought he had fallen asleep until he said, “Svartalfheim is nothing by daylight. Wait till the moon rises.”

The sun set and a pure white moon rose, larger than she’d seen on any other realms, and as Sif sat with her legs dangling over the edge of the precipice, her sword laid across her lap, the dark land turned silver, and the beauty that she’d thought was there before faded and died as the dark wonder of night unfolded before her. The black peaks turned darker, but the silver moonlight rushed down their shining surfaces like water and touched the land with a light that illuminated nothing. At the base of the mountain, Sif could see movements of shapes she could not identify. As high up as she and Loki were, these shadows must be the size of oaks, but she felt no fear nor battle lust. They swirled and reformed and melted through the glass forests and the open plains. Loki was right—they would not climb to her.

Speaking of Loki—from behind her she could hear the deep breaths of sleep that meant Loki was far from this world. So she allowed herself to do what she would not in front of any man nor woman and wept for the sheer release of it. You could not call it pure sadness or homesickness or weariness or joy. It was all of them at once and something more. She knew with rare certainty that one part of her life was ending tonight as the quest did and after hating this portion so long she found she still mourned its passing.

 _Someday I’ll look back at this time,_  Sif thought _, and remember it as being so simple. And now there is not a man in Asgard who cannot say that I have not proven myself a warrior_. But that did not matter, not nearly as much as the simple truth that Sif herself knew that she was a warrior now too and that assurance dried her tears. It was with a warrior’s steady gaze she cast her eyes to the open obsidian sky with more stars dotting it than a million scholars in a billion years could ever catalog and name. She’d stepped foot in all of the Nine Realms. What a fraction of infinity that was.

“Loki?” she whispered, little more than an enunciated exhalation. She turned around and leaned over until her head rested on the furs beside his. “Loki,” she whispered again.

“Mmm,” came the reply, which Sif considered was awake enough.

“What is the universe like outside the Nine Realms?”

“Strange,” he murmured, almost whispered. She reached over and touched his cheek, running her finger over the soft curve until his eyes fluttered open.

“It’s your watch in thirty minutes,” she said. “You may as well get up now.”

“Or I could sleep another thirty minutes,” Loki said, but he pushed himself up with a groan that Sif would have said was exaggerated for dramatic effect, but over the last six months she’d slept on enough solid rock to know that the only thing more miserable than lying on top of it was getting yourself off of it. Of course, Loki was still probably exaggerating for dramatic effect. He exaggerated everything for dramatic effect, after all. That was probably why she’d always liked his stories so much.

“When I am a legend,” Sif said as she slid back out onto the ledge, “you shall write the tales of my exploits. You’ll do them justice.”

“A random request,” Loki said. He cracked his neck and grimaced. “Will you include this in the tales? The Ballad of Loki and Sif and how they failed to find the one thing they set out for and accomplished nothing at all.”

“Is that still what you think?” Sif asked. She unsheathed her new dagger and began to sharpen it. “We’ve nearly died in every realm. I killed a dragon and you stole half of Nigavellir’s treasure along with who knows how many books. I do not call that nothing.”

Loki sat with the lost look of someone not yet fully awake. Then he shook his head, smiled, and yawned his smile off. “Five hundred and four books, all of them one of a kinds that the other realms will sorely miss and Asgard will much appreciate. Which interestingly enough think counts as a work of significant independent scholarship that qualifies for Fifth Form,” Loki said, ducking under the low-hanging lip of the cave and joined Sif dangling her feet over the ledge. “Praise be for magically expanding bags.”

 “Praise be,” she agreed. “I’ve got at least fourteen new battle axes over the course of all this.” She nudged him with her shoulder. “Asgard counts looting libraries as independent research?”

“If you do it well enough. The maesters made Father Sixth Form after he raided Angrboda,” Loki said. He smiled ruefully and shook his head. “When Asgardian nobles are surprised that other realms hate us, I just laugh and laugh.”

“But you yourself do the things you say make other realms hate us,” Sif pointed out.

“Of course,” Loki agreed. “It might be wrong, but it works out wonderfully for my realm. I’d feel differently if I lived elsewhere but…” He spread his arms, shrugged, and yawned again. “It’s just as well the Tenth Realm is nothing more than a fable. They would only hate Asgard as well.”

“Then you’ve concluded that it’s not real?”

“I’ve concluded that we cannot find it,” Loki said. “That’s essentially the same thing.” He looked down at the massing shadows below. “Are you disappointed?”

Sif ran her whetstone along the dagger’s edge. The metal of the blade glistened like a crescent moon in her hands. “There’s already more universe to see than you or I could ever manage in our lifetimes,” she said. “What is one more realm when we’re already so rich with them?”

“Fair point, Lady Sif,” he replied quietly.

Loki seemed in danger of wandering off into his own head again, and she couldn’t have that, so she nudged him again. “Truly, Loki, what else is out there? I’ve seen every realm in our corner of the sky save the one we were looking for, and you say it does not exist. What else is there in the sky?”

Loki looked at her and then at the stars as leaned back on his arms. “Little is known.”

“And I know none of it. Knowledge of the off-realm worlds is restricted to the royal family and those closest to it.”

“True, true. I’d forgotten.” Loki gave her a mischievous if still sleep-addled grin. “Are you royal family, Lady Sif?”

She rolled her eyes. “I’ll shove you off this ledge. I am willing to walk home.”

“Your common manners indicate there’s no royal blood in you. Then are you close enough to count?”

“As intimate as intimate can be.”  She nudged him with her shoulder again, and this time she left it there, pressed against his bare skin.  It was strange—he smelled like no other man she touched before. At court she’d chalked it up to fastidiousness, but here cloakless, shirtless, soapless, and goldless, decked in sweat and mud and blood, there was still something fundamentally different about him. Other men, they were earth and meat. What Loki was, she had no word for it, save maybe the feeling in the back of her throat when she left the shores of Asgard and stared upon her first foreign sky glinting silver light off the snow below. “Come now,” she whispered. “Tell me about the stars.”

For a moment, they just breathed together there in starlight her eyes had never before this night beheld. Then he entwined his fingers through hers with a gentleness that he kept secret above all else.  “I’ll tell you all I know.”

Loki knew much. He knew of a city built over a black hole held at bay by the strongest magic, of a city built with no up or down but out in every direction as the gravity shifted by the day, of a city where at night citizens got off the streets to avoid the roving packs of dreams. He knew of a planet as large as the Nine Realms combined where the smallest animal was as large as a mountain and the smallest insect was as large as a man, and he knew of a planet the size of his fist with the most intricate ecosystem the universe knew. He knew of a planet that was only desert with a mountain made of pure diamond with a small carved cave in the bottom that was supposed to be the most beautiful sight in the universe and held the planet’s greatest treasure—a small wooden cup carved from their last tree.

He knew of worlds where every being had sevens limbs, one limb, twenty limbs, none. He knew of a moon that slept and its inhabitants spent their lives as gently as possible so as not to wake it. He knew of a sun no less fiery than their own with cities built upon its surface nonetheless. He knew of a sky that rained glass. He knew of a fire that burned cold. He knew of a town where once a year your shadows broke free and danced a waltz with you through town and dipped you low as they begged you to always love them and remember that they loved you.

All this and more Loki knew. And now Sif did as well.

“So many worlds,” she whispered as the sun started to rise and banish them from her sight. “How many of them were lies?”

By now his arm was wrapped around her shoulder, his other hand resting in hers, and he pulled her tighter with both. “My Lady Sif,” he said, tender as the morning sunrise, “would I lie to you?”

She cupped his face, her thumb pressed against scars in the curve of his smile. “Every wicked day of your wicked life.”

His smile deepened the way it rarely did at court, sincere and mischievous in equal portions at the same time. “Blame my wicked mouth.”

She laughed as the warmth of the morning pooled in her depths. “Oh, I do, though it has been roughly misused as of late.”

Loki ran his hand from her wrist to her forearm, and Sif shivered with the gentle chill of his hands. “How ought it be used then?”

“You’re a clever boy,” Sif murmured as he pulled her face to his. “Show me what your studies have taught you.”

She felt his sigh ghost across her lips before he pressed his mouth to hers.

Nothing but the sun covered her skin as he kissed her body wet and quivering. What little clothes they had been wearing had become her bed, spread as a blanket underneath her undulating body, stopping the rocks from doing the scratching that ought to be Loki’s job. Sif wove her hands through his hair and bucked her hips up to meet his face. His fingers kneaded and squeezed her thighs like he needed something to hold on to as well. Six inches to the left of them, the precipice gave way to a five hundred foot fall, and for one giddy moment, Sif considered tightening her legs around him and rolling off to meet the ground. What a way to die. If Asgard would deny her a warrior’s death, then Sif would embrace a lover’s.

The moment passed as Sif reared back, aching and sweating and gasping in the sunlight. She could  _feel_  Loki’s smirk against her skin. Why die now when life presented so many chances for so much more fun?

When they collapsed utterly spent, Loki gasped into her like she was air and she wrapped her arms around him and held him where he was. The weight of him on top of her, the long expanse of his bare flesh against hers, the little shudders still racking his body as he pressed his mouth against her damp neck and whispered words she could not understand—she wanted it to linger. She wanted it to stretch. Partition hung in the air with the midmorning sun, waiting for nightfall to crash down across the Nine Realms like a battleaxe. The intersecting branches of the World Tree were to be trimmed away and portioned into neat sections of shrubbery that soldiers who were not Sif would patrol by the leave of the All-Father, and oh how much safer will the worlds be, as if safety were the aim of life.

When Sif returned to Asgard, Thor would be waiting with hammer in hand and hunting on the mind, and perhaps he would even be waiting for her if the prince had not already forgotten the maiden who slew the dragon. She knew he had not. Thor had promised, after all, and Thor’s word was solid as the rock Sif laid upon, solid as the man who laid upon her, who pressed his thigh between her legs and made her sigh with want. “You’re crushing me,” she said.  

“You’re holding me,” he replied as Sif turned underneath him until they were laying side by side, her back and his front pushed together without a gap. From this view, Sif looked out over the expanse of Svartalfheim, the shadowlands of bitter war and the fields of peaceful death. She could feel his chest press in and out, deeper and slower as he started to doze. She’d never seen him sleep before they’d traveled, and now she knew the hitch in his breath when he fell away from consciousness. Then he shook himself. “We need to go. We’ve six hours to get back to Asgard before we have to call for Heimdall to rescue us.”

“Would that be such a terrible fate?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said bluntly.

There were a thousand things she wanted to say, but she didn’t know what they were. Only that she ought to say them before the moment passed. But they wouldn’t take shape on her clumsy tongue so instead she lifted his hand to her mouth and kissed the palm. “I don’t want to go yet,” she whispered against the lines of his skin.

“I know,” he whispered in response against the back of her neck, all mirth gone from his voice and replaced with the secret gentleness that had no place in Asgard. “But we must.”

“Not right now,” she replied, and his arms tightened around her, and Sif knew that Loki knew as well what an ending felt like. 


End file.
